| The Belarusian government intends to push foreign beer out of the market On Tuesday, a program for the development of the brewing industry in Belarus was approved. It is expected that in the near future the state will transfer its stakes in three Belarusian breweries into trust management for banks. The goal of this program is to modernize the beer industry, thanks to which Belarus intends to oust foreign competitors, namely Russian and Ukrainian companies, from the market.
The government has been taking some measures to improve the industry since the beginning of the year. In particular, profitability standards and pricing restrictions were abolished. As a result, the profitability of the Belarusian brewing industry over the four months of this year increased by 2.6% and amounted to 12.6%, and the profit of brewing enterprises increased 1.7 times. Vice-president of the Belgospischeprom concern Anatoly Rubets said on this occasion: “We are grateful to the head of state that these enterprises were released.”
This year, the Belarusian authorities began to protect the domestic market from imported beer. In particular, excise taxes were introduced on its import. Anatoly Rubets commented on this: “What has been done has been done from the point of view of putting things in order. We have not applied any non-tariff regulation measures; we have only introduced accounting for the beer that is imported.”
The beer industry development program approved on Tuesday involves investments of $111.5 million. It is planned that of this amount, 74 million will come from loans, 25 million from foreign investments and 11.3 million from enterprises’ own funds.
It is also planned to transfer into trust management state-owned shares of the Brest Brewery (the state-owned stake is 89.6%), OJSC Belsolod (the state-owned stake is 50.45%) and the Polotsk Brewery (this enterprise has not yet been incorporated). Anatoly Rubets said that “the transfer of state shares is due to the fact that investments are needed for the development of enterprises.” In his opinion, if the reconstruction of these enterprises and Krinitsa is successful, then a fairly powerful brewing industry will appear in Belarus. By the way, the beginning of the modernization program was the opening of a credit line of $13.2 million to the Krinitsa brewery by the Belarusian-Austrian Priorbank. 90% of this amount has already been spent. It should also be noted that several years ago the Baltika company tried to implement an investment project at Krinitsa. However, its implementation failed - despite preliminary agreements, the government refused to issue additional shares in order to transfer them to Baltika. And recently, as the press service of the Baltika company told the Vremya Novostey newspaper, a notification came from Belarus that the project was completed. And now the company is trying to receive from the Belarusian side more than $10 million that were invested in Krinitsa.
Today, the Belarusian leadership is relying mainly on domestic investors. Belarus still does not refuse foreign investment, but, as Anatoly Rubets notes, “this is only possible on the terms that the concern offers.” It must be said that for many years there was practically no privatization in Belarus. Now that the Belarusian authorities have dared to start it, they are setting unacceptable conditions for potential buyers. Many profitable investment projects have been postponed due to excessive demands from the Belarusian side for the development of social infrastructure of companies.
The latest example is the disruption of competitions for the sale of shares in petrochemical enterprises. The conditions put forward by the Belarusian side did not interest investors, and as a result, not a single application was submitted. This led to disastrous results. The Ministry of Economy proposes to the government to sequester the budget, reducing the plan for attracting investments from 430 billion to 26 billion Belarusian rubles (today 1 dollar costs 2044 Belarusian rubles). Natalya VIKTOROVA, Minsk |
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